The effects of smoking on the breath, clothes, hair, and indeed the whole body, are most offensive. What is more overpowering than the stale smell remaining in a room where several persons have been smoking? When the practice is carried to excess, it causes the gums to become lax and flabby, and to recede from the discoloured teeth, which appear long, unsightly, and at length drop out. Dr. Rush, in his "Account of the life and death of Edward Drinker," tells us that that individual lost all his teeth by drawing the hot smoke of tobacco into his mouth. By the waste of saliva, and the narcotic power of tobacco, the digestive powers are impaired, and "every kind of dyspeptic symptoms," says Cullen, "are produced."[76] King James does not forget to note this habit as a breach of good manners. "It is a great vanitie and uncleannesse," says he, "that at the table, a place of respect, of cleanlinesse, of modestie, men should not be ashamed to sit tossing pipes, and puffing of the smoke of tobacco one to another, making the filthy smoke and stinke thereof to exhale athwart the dishes and infect the aire, when very often men that abhorre it, are at their repast."
We come now to the subject of chewing. Whether the rock goat, the filthy animal to which we have before adverted, or the tobacco worm, first taught imitative man to masticate tobacco, we are ignorant. One thing, however, is most certain, that of all modes of using it, chewing seems most vulgar and ungentlemanlike, and it is worthy of particular remark, that in our country it is more used in this manner, among the better class of society, than in any other part of the world.[77] All the worst effects which have been ascribed to it in the two former modes of using it, are, with increased severity, imputed to chewing. But tobacco used in this form is said to diminish hunger. "We have been told," says Dr. Leake, "that tobacco, when chewed, is a preservative against hunger; but this is a vulgar error, for in reality it may more properly be said to destroy appetite by the profuse discharge of saliva, which is a powerful dissolving fluid, essential both to appetite and digestion." In the use of the quid, or cud, accidents sometimes happen from swallowing portions, which must needs be very hurtful. Chewers are often taken by surprise, and rather than be detected in the unclean practice, they will, with Spartan fortitude, endure the horrible agonies of swallowing the juice, and sometimes even the quid itself. But we must close our remarks upon this vile habit, which we do by the following quotation from a French writer. "Quant a la coutume de chiquer le tabac, elle est bornée, je crois, à un petit nombre d'individus grossiers, et le plus souvent voués a des habitudes crapuleuses, du moins si j'en juge par ceux que j'y vois livrés." We take the liberty of referring tobacco chewers to Dr. Clark's treatise, (p. 24,) for a quotation he makes from Simon Paulli, physician to the King of Denmark, who wrote a treatise on the danger of using this herb, and also to a note at the foot of the page, both which we are unwilling to repeat.
We are almost prepared to assert, that there is scarcely a conceivable mode of applying tobacco to the human body, which has not been thought of and practised. In former times, it was used by the oculists. Howell says "that it is good to fortify and preserve the sight, the smoak being let in round about the balls once a week, &c." We have even known snuff to be blown into the eyes to cure inflammation. This latter remedy should be somewhat perilous, if what Sauvages relates be true, that a female was thrown into a catalepsy by a small portion of snuff which had accidentally entered her eye. The Rev. S. Wesley, speaking of the abuse of tobacco, intimates an apprehension that the human ear will not long remain exempted from its application.
"To such a height with some is fashion grown,
They feed their very nostrils with a spoon,[78]
One, and but one degree is wanting yet,
To make their senseless luxury complete;
Some choice regale, useless as snuff and dear,
To feed the mazy windings of the ear."
Now, as a medicine, at least, it has been used for the ear; for Sir Hans Sloan positively affirms that the "oyl or juice dropped into the ear is good against deafness."[79] Another mode of using tobacco, and not very common we hope, is what is called plugging, that is, thrusting long pellets or rolls of tobacco up the nose, and keeping them there during the night. As a dentifrice it is used in many parts of the world. We have had an opportunity of witnessing this fact in various parts of South America, but especially in Brazil, where respectable women do not scruple openly to use tobacco for this purpose. We have known several very respectable individuals of both sexes in our own country, who use snuff as a tooth powder, and with them its employment was just as much a habit as any other mode of using tobacco. These have been generally West Indians, or persons who have resided much in the West India islands. In some of our southern states, tobacco is much used among the ladies as a dentifrice. Indeed there appears to prevail generally, a very strong opinion, that it is an excellent preservative of the teeth, which is certainly an error; though we think it probable that the stimulus of tobacco, to those who use it in excess, may become in a certain degree necessary to their preservation.
Tobacco is truly a leveller. It equalizes the monarch and the hind, and is acceptable to the sage as well as the sailor. "Its smoke," says Thomson, "rising in clouds from the idolatrous altar of the native Mexican, opened the world of spirits to his delirious imagination," while it has "even assisted in extending the boundaries of intellect, by aiding the contemplations of the Christian philosopher." If we advert to the irrefragable proofs of the virulent properties of this plant, and the various arguments which have been urged against its habitual use, we cannot fail to be struck with the extraordinary fact, that so large a portion of mankind should voluntarily struggle through its repugnant qualities, both of taste and effect, until by habit its stimulus grows pleasurable, and the system becomes mithridated against its poison! It would almost seem as if the use of some substance of this class were necessary to the intellectual and physical economy of man, since no nation nor age, of which we have any account, has been found without. Of the various masticatories which have been in general use, if we except opium, tobacco is unquestionably the most pernicious. Although its moderate use may not shorten life, or prove perceptibly hurtful to health, yet its excessive employment certainly generates many formidable disorders, particularly of the nerves and stomach, and subjects its votary to innumerable inconveniences and sufferings. Our space will not permit us to expatiate any further; and we shall therefore conclude our article by relating from Rush a very interesting anecdote of Dr. Franklin, which places the common-sense view of this matter in the strongest possible light. A few months before Franklin's death, he declared to one of his friends, that he had never used tobacco in the course of his long life, and that he was disposed to believe there was not much advantage to be derived from it, for that he had never known a man who used it, who advised him to follow his example.
FOOTNOTES:
[16] Epistolæ Hoelianæ, p. 405.
[17] Critical and Historical Dictionary, article Thorius.
[18] Burton's Anatomy of Melancholy, fol. p. 235.